Mary Kay Ash, the founder of Mary Kay Cosmetics, once said, “People fail forward to success.”

And it really is true. You will make mistakes along the way to your success.

And it is your attitude toward your failures that will determine your eventual success … or not. Ralph Waldo Trine had this to say on the topic:

“This is a case where even failure is success, for the failure is not in the effort, and every earnest effort adds an increment of power that will eventually accomplish the end aimed at. We can, then, gain the full and complete power of determining what character, what type of thoughts we entertain.”

In other words, as long as we make an honest effort to do the best we can and to learn from our mistakes, we will eventually succeed. It really is all in the mindset …

You could take a failure or setback as evidence that you are a looser and give up on your dreams. But what will that get you? Just another failure and a broken dream.

Or, you could be like Thomas Edison was when he was inventing the light bulb and see each failure or setback as a lesson on how not to do something so you can fine tune how to do something.

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If you would like to read my annotated version of Character Building Thought Power, with my notes, comments and exercises added to Trine’s text to help you fully engage with the material, you can pick up a copy here: Ebook Edition or Paperback Edition.